


The Anatomy of Hearts

by roamingbadger



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Introspection, Just a pinch of angst, Mentions of other Avengers characters - Freeform, Mmmmm, basically a continuation where Civil War left off, kind of realization of feelings?, like a Vision-style pinch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6805141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roamingbadger/pseuds/roamingbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coming to terms with your feelings is a lot harder when you're not supposed to have any. One-shot, canon compliant, picks up after Civil War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Anatomy of Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> This was primarily inspired by the last scenes of Vision and Wanda in Civil War. I felt there was a story there to be continued, and I hope you agree and enjoy!

 

* * *

           “I didn’t think that was possible.”

            Tony Stark’s words were still ringing in Vision’s ears as he drifted—quite literally—through the Avengers compound. Upstairs, Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes was being treated for an injury that fell on Vision’s shoulders. At least the resulting guilt was easy to diagnose: the prick of conscience, the fatigue, the melancholy.

            Yes, Vision thought, that much was familiar.

            But the accelerated beat of his synthetic heart? That could be from anxiety, he reasoned, floating down several levels to the empty gym—but he knew better. His pulse was not under a constant strain. No, it picked up irregularly—seemingly at random. And yet, as Mr. Stark’s words echoed once more through his thoughts, Vision realized this sensitivity was not random, not at all.

            He’d managed to avoid seeing the pattern for some time, masking the truth behind increasingly more complicated and desperate logic. _Of course_ his lungs had tightened when he first touched her, pulling her into his arms. The grief written in her eyes would have stolen the breath from far bigger lungs than an android’s. _Naturally_ the playful sharpness of her tongue raised his pulse each time she gave him a lesson in human behavior. And if his throat constricted as he watched her sipping from a spoon, it was because that spoon contained his very first culinary attempts—from a chef who did not eat.

            But the way her smile made his non-organs buzz like a hive full of bees—that had been harder to explain away with logic. And that sensation was nothing compared to the stabbing white-hot wound of watching her suffer in the battle against Captain Rogers.   

           Even the memory of her scream of pain made his palms tingle in the dim light of the compound’s gym. He drifted past treadmills and frozen ellipticals, skirting the hole through which she had thrown him towards the core of the earth. Not even that scar in the floor could help block her from his thoughts. He understood why she did it now.

           He’d understood then.

           Vision floated at the wall of windows, looking out on acres of trees, grass, and wildflowers in bloom. Even the verdant landscape could not distract his thoughts from the image of her crumpled on the hot concrete of the airport runway. He closed his eyes, but the memory was buried within him, as permanent now as if it had been programmed there from the hour of his creation. Wanda, peering up through expressive eyes, her apology on the heels of his own. Her shoulders trembling in the circle of his arms, her breathing shallow, her voice ragged. That grief from before seeping back in. The knowledge, from somewhere above the region of his solar plexus, that he would do anything, _anything_ , to chase the grief away again.

           And upstairs, in compound room MC-1569, Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes was suffering the consequences of an android . . . feeling.

           Eyes still closed, Vision stilled his lungs, stopped his heart, silenced his pulse. He hovered, unmoving, hollow of human imitation. After all, his veins needed no blood, his muscles needed no veins. The programming in his brain could function well enough without them. Now that he could control his own shape, he built himself after humans because the design was understandable and easy. He’d never suspected that he might one day feel like them, too.

           For the span of a few human breaths, he held himself unmoving. This would clear his mind, reboot his system. He could do it every day until he was nothing but logic again, nothing but what he was meant to be.

           For androids were not built to fall in love.

* * *

            Wanda would never have called herself invulnerable. It was only that they’d hurt her so much, taken everything from her, that she began to feel untouchable. _You’re safe when they have nothing left to take._

            That was before she saw the cell. Cold, stark, blinding white, it made the compound seem like a palace, though they were both prisons in their way. Once they had her muzzled—the straightjacket had been the first step—she understood just how wrong she’d been before. The Avengers, they had been her new everything.

            Now she’d lost that, too.

            She’d done right. She knew she’d done right. She repeated it to herself like a mantra in her solitary confinement, but there were times when even that didn’t help. They never shut off the lights where she was, and for the first few days, her sleep was delirious, constantly interrupted. She berated herself—she’d gone soft.

            She had dreams. Sometimes Pietro, sometimes the Captain and Stark. Always herself, but bound and muzzled as she was, never able to fight. Never able to help. A danger to others. Useless.

            She’d wake up and repeat it in her thoughts: “I did the right thing.” She’d hear it in Clint’s voice, sometimes: “You got off your ass.” She’d try to smile. Despite the muzzle, it sometimes worked.

            Vision showed up in her thoughts at the most unexpected times. When she was lowest, when she wanted to rock back and forth and lose herself again, that’s when his face would swim before her eyes. The first time it happened, her mental image of him was so clear, she thought he’d appeared in reality, floating through the concrete of her cell just to keep her company. Always her jailor. Always her friend.

            Her disappointment when his voice didn’t _actually_ echo off the concrete—when it echoed inside her skull instead—that surprised her. _Because he wasn’t here to rescue me_ , she thought, but dismissed that just as quickly as it had appeared.

            _Because he wasn’t here,_ she realized. _To talk to me. To make me laugh. To make me curious. To make me strong._

Solitary confinement made a mockery of time. She couldn’t say if hours passed between his visits, or days, or even weeks. Sometimes, it felt like seconds. She’d remember him asking in all earnestness why Avengers locked the door to the bathroom in the most secure compound in the world. The muzzle swallowed up her laughter at the memory of his chicken paprikash. As hard as she tried to think of something else, a few breaths later she’d be remembering the look on his face when he said, “I’m sorry.” And her heart would hurt when she thought she had no heart left.

            When Steve and Sam first appeared outside her cell, Wanda felt a twinge of disappointment. Her sanity was going, she thought, and about time, too. Shame that it wasn’t Vision, though, to see her away. She thought they’d become quite friendly. When her cell door actually _opened_ and she felt the touch of Steve’s hand on her arm, she nearly screamed. The muzzle caught up whatever sound did escape just in time.

            Later, on the quinjet, they left her in a quiet corner, flexing her fingers toward the wall. The sparks of red that appeared across her palms reminded her of Vision’s skin.

            It was Clint who finally approached her as they were passing over the Arctic Circle. She turned at the light sound of his tread a few steps away.

            His eyebrows were halfway to his hairline. “Hands still work,” he said, with a nod to her fingers. “How’s the head?”

            She clenched her hands into fists, the sparks disappearing. As she met Clint eye to eye, she remembered the way Vision held her on the tarmac, the tightening of his fingers around her shoulder for the briefest of seconds before he was gone. “The head is fine,” she said, her voice hoarse.

            He didn’t ask about her heart.            

* * *

 

           

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! These two characters got under in my skin in unexpected ways, so I may or may not be adding more.


End file.
